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FIRST NESTA-BACKED COMPANY TO WIN MILLION Â£ DEAL

06/05/2004

"This is the largest single injection to date by a venture capital house in any of our investments and we hope that Tideway can now go from strength to strength with the backing of Apax."

NESTA's investment has enabled Tideway to bring the first version of their innovative software management system to market. Tideway's product automatically maps out, tracks and audits changes to complex IT environments.

Tideway's unique appliance-based software solution will save time and money, as well as bring significant security and risk management benefits, by ensuring that any knock-on effects resulting from changes to IT environments, can be predicted and controlled.

Mark White, NESTA Invention and Innovation Director, said:

"Providing seed capital for companies like Tideway at the earliest, pre-VC stage is very much part of our role, and it is terrific news that Apax has recognised the commercial potential in Tideway so quickly after our initial round. This is the largest single injection to date by a venture capital house in any of our investments and we hope that Tideway can now go from strength to strength with the backing of Apax."

Richard Muirhead, Tideway Systems' CEO, said: "NESTA's seed investment in Tideway has been instrumental in our success to this point - it has allowed us to construct a world-class team, and to deliver significant innovation in what is a new product category. This second round investment from Apax Partners further underlines the value our team has been able to achieve, and will allow us to expand the business to address the significant market opportunity ahead of us. We are very optimistic for the future."

NESTA's investment was part of a seed-funding round which also included angel investors, Esther Dyson of EDventure Holdings, John Taysom, founder and Managing Partner of RVC, formerly the Venture Capital arm of Reuters.

Michael Chalfen, Director at Apax Partners, said: "We believe that Tideway's combination of large market opportunity, elegant and unique product, and talented entrepreneurial team can create the platform for a world leading software company here in the UK."

Tideway Systems works with global IT enterprises within sectors including investment banking, financial services and e-commerce to make them more responsive, efficient and reliable. Tideway Systems' unique, cost-effective software appliance automatically discovers and tracks network, server, database, application and business relationships previously uneconomic to map. Tideway's accurate, up-to-date, 360 degree view of the IT environment radically enhances IT architecture, governance, deployment and support functions.

Headquartered in London, UK, Tideway Systems was founded in 2002 by Richard Muirhead, previously co-founder of telecoms software company Orchestream. Most recently he was Entrepreneur-in-Residence with Accel Partners. For more information on Tideway Systems visit www.tideway.com

Apax Partners is one of the world's leading private equity investmentgroups, operating across Europe, Israel, the United States and Japan.With over 30 years of direct investing experience, Apax Partners' Fundsprovide long-term equity financing to entrepreneurs to build andstrengthen world-class companies. It pursues a balanced equity portfolio strategy, investing in companies at all stages of development from early stage to buy-out.

Apax Partners' Funds invest in companies across 6 sectors: information technology; telecommunications; healthcare; media; financial services; retail and consumer. Some of Apax Partners' Funds technology investments include Autonomy, Bluestone, Computacenter, Corvil, Dr Solomons, ForeSystems, HAL, Nexagent, NTL, Systemonic, Preventsys, and Sonim Technologies. For more information visit: www.apax.com